With the current estimates for activity durations and dependencies of some activities on others, the earliest that the Huntsville Project can be finished is July 7, 2012 – 1 week late of the desired schedule. However, it should not be a big problem to fit these activities in the desired schedule as 1 week delay is relatively small compared to the total project duration of 66 weeks. The following activities are on the critical path (Gido, Celements, 2012, pg. 156) of the project, determining the 66 week minimum time that the project needs according to the current schedule:
Select Architect, Create Pre-Prod Plan Establish Bldg Concept Create Bldg Design Procure Site Obtain Permits & Approvals Construct Bldg Install Equipment Perform Pre-Prod Plan Perform Prod Start-up Begin Distribution
Not just that these activities cannot be delayed any further, their total time need to be reduced by at least 1 week so that the project can be finished on time. Following are a few techniques that can be used to cover this 1 week gap:
1. Include weekends for some activities:
Current schedule comprises of activities to be performed only on the weekdays. If just 3 weekends are included in any one of the above activities, the total time can be easily reduced by 6 days which will be enough to meet the desired deadline. This will cost the same because 1 week’s work scheduled to be completed after the deadline will be performed before the deadline. It’s the same payment for same work, just the work will be performed at an earlier than scheduled time.
2. Reduce an activity’s duration:
It might be possible to optimize the sub-tasks in an activity to reduce its estimated length. For example, “Construct Bldg” is scheduled to be 40 weeks and the contractor might be able to reduce this to 39 weeks maybe at an additional cost as constructions company meet tight deadlines all the times. Another option here will be to
References: Gido, Jack. Clements, James. (2012). Successful Project Management [5] (VitalSource Bookshelf), Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/